J D Power Associates

Auto-By-Tel Corp., the Irvine-based Internet car shopping service, scored a coup this month when it was ranked tops in its industry in dealer satisfaction by rating guru J.D. Power & Associates. The company is duking it out with a number of competitors, including software giant Microsoft Corp.'s CarPoint. So getting J.D. Power's seal of approval gives it a big leg up in competing for dealers who will pay Auto-By-Tel for the rights to a market territory.

Porsche and other high-end auto brands performed best in the annual J.D. Power and Associates study of satisfaction after 90 days of ownership, but domestic companies showed improvement, according to results released Wednesday. The German automaker topped Power's 11th annual survey that measures performance, interior layout and customer satisfaction with cars three months after they were driven off the dealers' lot. Ford Motor Co.'

A legal battle between two of the nation's leading car research firms, J. D. Power & Associates and AutoPacific Group Inc., has been settled out of court. The settlement announced last week ends a lawsuit that Power, based in Agoura Hills, had filed against Santa Ana-based AutoPacific and two of its analysts, Christopher W. Cedergren and Steven L. Morrison. Both Cedergren and Morrison used to work for Power.

For the third straight year, Lexus, Infiniti and Saturn took the top three rankings in the 1995 J.D. Power & Associates' annual survey of driver's satisfaction. Acura, a unit of Honda Motor Co., and Sweden's AB Volvo tied for the fourth spot. The influential Agoura Hills-based marketing firm said Tuesday that the car business as a whole improved its performance three points on Power's Customer Satisfaction Index, scoring 138 of a possible 202.

One in four people shopping for a used car goes to the Internet for help, according to the first publicly released study on the topic. The nearly 10,000 used-car buyers polled by J.D. Power & Associates said they most frequently visited the Web site of Kelley Blue Book for pricing and other general information, as well as the sites of Consumer Reports, Autobytel.com, Edmund's and Microsoft Corp.'s CarPoint.

J.D. Power & Associates, the market research firm best known for its automotive quality surveys, has hired an investment firm to explore financing options that could include a sale of the privately held company. "We're in the early stage and every option is on the table," said Tom Shaver, a senior partner in the Westlake Village firm. Power has hired Evercore Partners Inc., an investment firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles, as its advisor.

General Motors Corp.'s Cadillac luxury brand Wednesday topped a J.D. Power & Associates survey of customer satisfaction with their dealers, while its Saturn brand slumped from first to fifth. The world's largest automaker led the survey for the fourth straight year. Porsche moved up to second from eighth in the annual study by the Westlake Village-based research company. Cadillac was second in 2002. Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln remained third and its Mercury brand rose to fourth from ninth.

Five Japanese luxury cars topped J.D. Power & Associates' quality rankings of 5-year-old cars and large American models dominated the rest of the best, the marketing firm said Tuesday. Lexus and Infiniti, the luxury lines of Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co., were ranked first and second in Power's Vehicle Dependability Study. The study rated car brands and individual 1990 models based on questionnaires filled out by 25,728 owners who bought their cars new and had owned them five years.

J.D. Power and Associates and Metzler & Associates have formed an alliance to conduct the energy utility industry's first independently funded customer satisfaction survey. The initial survey, scheduled to be released in the summer, will measure residential consumers' satisfaction with the 100 largest electric utilities in the United States--companies that serve 90% of all residential customers. Agoura Hills-based J.D.

J. D. Power & Associates, the Agoura Hills-based market research firm whose customer satisfaction surveys have become a benchmark for quality in the auto industry, on Wednesday released its first syndicated study of customer satisfaction in the computer industry. The top rating in the survey of personal computer users in small- and medium-sized businesses went to Dell Computer Corp., an Austin, Tex.-based vendor that sells its machines by mail order.